Business to business (B to B) or business to consumer (B to C) sales of aviation-related products and services involve a high degree of trust between the seller and the buyer. These are sometimes big-ticket items that involve a lot of money, but more importantly, these are sometimes products and services that the buyer’s life could depend on.

This degree of trust is established over time, using some version of the marketing cycle below. The most cost-effective (and most trusted) way for people in the aviation industry is through word of mouth. People hear from other people about products or services that work well. This “social trust” is key in these relationships. The least effective is a telephone directory. No pilot wants to just pick a company out of the phone book to do business with.

Generally speaking, this first contact is the start of a relationship, in which the customer requests information and the seller provides it. This could take hours, days, weeks, months or even years, but this pipeline of “leads” is one of the most important assets for a business to manage. Keeping in touch with people that have contacted your company by some combination of email, postcards, a newsletter, regular updates to your website, or periodic phone calls is key to establishing a relationship that will result in a sale when the customer is ready to buy. Of course, the customer can “opt out” of the pipeline at any time and those wishes should be respected as well.

The typical marketing cycle for aviation products or services follows some version of flow of this diagram.

Aviation Marketing Cycle

Aviation Marketing Cycle

Once the sale is completed, another cycle begins where customer service and continued communication continues the relationship. Referrals (word of mouth, again!) and subsequent purchases are an important element of the marketing cycle. Continuing to communicate with customers after the sale is key to keeping relationships strong.

Enter your email in the upper right of this page, or call Paula Williams at 702-987-1679 for a free consultation about your aviation marketing needs.

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